Stepping out of the bus was like plunging into an ice bath. Branches groaned and shifted as the wind rustled through the trees. I listened to see if I could hear Jake, but there were no signs of him.

He's gone.

My heart slammed against my ribs. I was too late. The wolves had already gotten him. Bears had clawed him to pieces and dragged him back to their den for dinner. The dark, inky night had consumed him, never to be seen again.

I shook my head. I was being ridiculous. After pulling my phone out of my back pocket, I lit up the screen. It was 4:28 in the morning. My hands shook from the cold and sleep deprivation as I flipped it into flashlight mode.

The flash lit up my feet where tangles of dried weeds and sage brush covered the ground. Dead pine needles crunched under my Vans as I climbed up the ditch.

"Jake?" I called when I reached the road.

I turned to my left, shining my light down the desolate tunnel of trees. The beam cast shadows along the gritty road. Phantoms formed within potholes and behind rocks. Their shapes crept across the paved gravel like rats as the light passed over them.

A chill surged through me, and my heart jumped into my throat. Jake wasn't there.

I turned to the right.

A sharp, bright light blasted my eyes like a laser, momentarily blinding me. I snapped my eyelids shut, and the world glowed red. I brought my hand up to cover my face before daring to open them again.

"Alex?" a voice asked.

Jake.

I released a breath I hadn't realized I was holding. The warm air from my lungs condensed in front of me like tiny ice crystals frozen in time.

"Hey," I said as I shuffled over to where his light was coming from. Twigs cracked under my feet as I passed through the thin atmosphere. The world was a vacuum, sucking all the heat from my body. I put my phone back in my pocket and crossed my arms in front of me for warmth.

"How are you feeling, man?" he asked as I got closer. His voice shook as he spoke, and he crouched by the side of the road with one hand in his pocket, the other holding his phone. Jake was a big guy. He was tough. He would never admit to being cold or anything, but I could tell he was freezing his ass off sitting out here.

"My head still hurts a bit, but I'm fine." I sat down next to him on the side of the road. "Think it's just a bruise."

Jake nodded. "That's good."

Even though we had both turned off our phone lights, my eyes were adjusting, and I could make out his face in the glinting light from the moon and stars as the clouds drifted past them.

He reached up to his ear and spun the Sharpie he always kept in his gauge a few times before taking it out. He played with the cap, clicking it open and closed. Jake told people he kept it in there so he'd be ready if anyone ever asked for his autograph, but I knew it was really because he liked to draw. He never wanted to miss a moment of inspiration. He'd designed almost all of his own tattoos and even some of mine—the banshee I had on my left arm and the siren I had on my right.

"I was worried about you, Alex," Jake finally said, putting the Sharpie back into the hole in his earlobe.

I avoided eye contact and stared off into the forest, clenching my hands into fists. My injury was all anyone seemed focused on. I was fine.

I could convince myself I was fine.

"Any luck watching the road?" I asked.

Jake snorted a laugh and held out his arm as though to gesture this is it. "Nope, nothing yet. Haven't even seen a single car."

I nodded, and we were silent for a minute.

"I thought I heard wolves," I finally said.

"I've been hearing them, too." Jake nodded. "These woods are alive." He turned to look at me. His hood was up, and his face was drawn into a frown. A cloud passed over the moon, and the entire night dimmed like a candle being snuffed out.

"What if no one comes by?" I asked.

Jake furrowed his brow. "What?"

"I don't mean like, ever." I paused for a second. That wasn't what I meant, was it? Of course not, that was crazy. "But not for a while," I continued. "Liz said that the truck that ran us off the road was the first car she'd seen in hours. What if no one comes by for a long time?"

Jake exhaled heavily, his breath turning to mist in front of him.

"What if we miss the show?" I continued.

"Alex, let's just worry about getting out of here first. We'll figure out the situation with the gig after that."

I clenched my teeth but nodded. I didn't want to miss the gig—be that band that didn't show up. As a kid, seeing the bands I loved performed had meant everything to me. Listening to them and being a part of it made me feel okay—like I wasn't alone—even when things were falling apart.

I didn't want to let anyone down, especially not when we were just starting to get a good base with our own set of fans. We had all put so much work into this.

I couldn't let them down. If I let them down . . . what if they didn't love me anymore?

The idea sounded extremely conceited, but it was the truth. As we'd started to gain fans, I'd become addicted to the idea of being loved and adored by people I didn't know. The thought of letting them down frightened me. Fame was slippery, and if I released the teeth I'd clenched around it for even a second, it would slither away. All of our work would be for nothing. Gone in an instant.

Logically, I knew this wouldn't happen from missing one show. It was just one show, and being stranded in a ditch after an accident was as good an excuse as any. But, excuse or not, I would still be letting everyone down. I couldn't do that. I couldn't fail.

I tried to stop my mind from winding off on a tangent, but there was something compulsive and sick about the way I thought about things when confronted with the possibility of failure. I knew my thought patterns were irrational and aberrant, but that didn't mean I could stop them, and it didn't make the fear and anxiety any less real. End-of-the-world syndrome was what my mom had referred to it as when I was a child. If I pulled out one piece of the Jenga, the whole tower would come crumbling down.

I pulled my hood up over my head and put my hands into my pockets, trying to hold in as much heat as possible. There was nothing we could do, though. Nothing, other than wait. "I can take a turn watching the road if you want to get some sleep, Jake," I offered. I wouldn't be able to sleep anyway. I might as well be the one to stay up. Let everyone else rest.

"Thanks, Alex," Jake said. For a second, he looked like he might actually get up and let me watch. But instead, he shifted where he sat and faced me. "Actually, though, I've been wanting to talk to you about something." He paused for a second. I shot him a look out of the corner of my eye, suddenly wishing I could crawl back into the ditch and hide.

"Alex, we've been friends since we were kids," Jake continued. "If something's wrong, you can talk to me about it, you know?"

"Nothing's wrong," I responded too quickly.

"You've been hanging out with Cade a lot lately," Jake said. "If the two of you have been into anything, I won't judge you, man. I just need to know what's up."

I ground my teeth. From the start of the tour, Jake hadn't liked Cade. I remembered a night after one of our shows—the one where I'd passed out on stage. It was late, and I was sitting on our bus with the two of them. Everyone else had already gone to sleep.

"Hey, maybe tone it down, Alex," Jake said. He sat on the bench across from Cade and me, passing a can of PBR between his hands. "You probably shouldn't be drinking at all tonight."

A haze hung in my mind, like the world was swirling around me. "I'm fine." I took a sip of my beer, and the disorientation intensified. I felt like I was going to pass out again.

Jake's gaze landed on Cade. A strange tension hung between the two of them,making the whole space feel frozen. A coldness pulse from the base of my spine up to my brain.

"Don't tell him what to do," Cade said. His dark eyes flickered, and an incongruous grin crept across his face.

I shook myself from the memory, bringing my gaze to meet Jake's.

"What, like drugs?" I asked. I let out an uncalled for laugh. Something about the situation suddenly struck me funny. "You think I'm on drugs?"

"I'm not saying that," Jake said.

"Liz told me that you asked her if she thought I was on drugs." I felt myself grinning. Why did I find this so funny? My hysteria was scaring me. I covered my mouth, trying to calm myself.

Jake was silent for a second. "I'm just concerned about you. You're tired all the time. Barely eating. You're my best friend, Alex. I don't want something bad to happen to you. When you passed out at that show . . . you were unconscious for a while. It really scared me."

I clenched my hands around the dry grass by my feet, pinching my eyes shut as I thought back to our set that night.

"How are we doing tonight Cleveland?" I yelled into the microphone. My heart pounded with the thrill and excitement of performing.

Liz beat on the drums, and the crowd screamed back in a roar. I grinned. I loved the rush.

"Well, you're all looking fucking fantastic." I panted, catching my breath from the previous song. I swung my head back so my sweaty hair flung out of my face. Looking out, I could hardly see the audience. Lights shined up at the stage. It was like staring into the sun.

"Are you all ready for Wolfpack?" I bellowed.

Another chorus of screams erupted from the audience.

Sweat dripped from my back and forehead. The heat from the lights was intense, especially after running around on stage and screaming my lungs out for forty-five minutes. My head spun.

"Thanks for coming out and rocking with us tonight, Ohio." I turned back and looked to my band. Jake wiped his brow, his guitar slung around his neck. When I caught his eye, he nodded to me. I nodded back and turned around.

My vision darkened around the edges as I stared out into the lights. My body felt faint. I knew I was redlining with exhaustion, but I could push through.

"Alex." Jake's voice pulled me out of the memory.

"It was just exhaustion," I snapped defensively. I took a second to breathe and calm myself. "I haven't been sleeping too well lately." I paused and looked down the road for a few seconds, wishing for headlights to somehow magically emerge in the distance and save me from this conversation. "I haven't been for a while now . . . It's gotten pretty bad. Some nights, I don't sleep at all." I looked back to Jake, this time making eye contact and holding it. "I'm sorry if I've been worrying you."

Jake nodded knowingly. "All right." He frowned as he said it, though. I could tell he didn't really trust me.

But that was it, wasn't it? That was all there was. It was just exhaustion. Right? I wasn't lying . . . was I?

Was there something I was missing? It felt like there was something on the tip of my tongue—the corona of my memory—something I should be remembering but wasn't.

Cade and I had stayed up that night—after Jake had given up and gone to sleep. He'd asked me something. I got the feeling there was something important about it, but the details lingered out of reach.

Cade leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. He turned to look me in the eyes, but my vision fogged over. My entire brain spun.

"You saw something when it happened, didn't you?" he asked. "Right before you passed out."

My heart pounded against my ribs. Everything faded towards darkness. It was like I was falling—the world tipped on its axis.

"What did you see?"

A chill rushed through me, the question pounding through my mind. I couldn't remember how I'd responded. After that, everything went dark.

Why had he asked that? What was he expecting me to respond with?

I forced myself back to that night, back to the stage, or at least what I could recall of it.

"We're Make Them Scream," I shouted, "and this is going to be our last song." I paused for a second while the crowd cheered. "I wanna see how crazy a circle pit Cleveland can make on this one. Right in front of the stage, right here." I motioned to the center of the floor. "Let's go wild, Ohio. If someone falls, you pick them up! Got it?" Shouting and screaming erupted from the audience. "This last song's called 'Event Horizon,' and it's a song about never giving up."

I took the microphone away from my face for a second, giving myself one last chance to catch my breath. Finally, after letting the overheated air out of my lungs in a gust, I brought the mic back to my mouth. "One, two, three, four!"

Drums crashed and thundered behind me, and the guitars wailed and screeched. The stage shook under my feet. I came into the first verse on a heavy scream. It exploded from my lungs like a roar: "GET UP!"

The stage spun around me. I blinked. The spotlights shone down like the eyes of the devil. Like two balls of fire flying towards me.

Like headlights.

And that was when everything went dark.

The sound of wolves howling pulled me out of the memory. Jake was on high alert, the flashlight on his phone back on. He leapt to his feet, shining the light into the trees along the cuff of the forest.

"That sounded closer," I said, standing up next to him.

Jake nodded as he glanced up and down the road.

"Maybe we should head back to the bus," I suggested. "I don't think any cars are coming by in the middle of the night. We can start watching the road again in the morning . . ."

"Alex," Jake interrupted me. I felt his hand grab me by the arm, and he pointed off to the woods across the road. "Do you see that?"